(ominous tone) - In my years of rescue work, I've seen the fury this planet can unleash.

I've watched wildfires scorch across Australia and California.

I've seen hurricanes rip through the Caribbean.

But I've never dealt with a tornado until now.

(radio warning signal) - [Radio Warning] You are in a life threatening situation.

A confirmed large and extremely dangerous tornado was located near Hardyville.

To protect your life, take cover now.

Considerable damage to homes, businesses, and vehicles is likely, and complete destruction is possible.

- [Doug] What I was seeing on the news was a monster size tornado had hit and devastated hundreds of houses.

I knew that it would be extremely beneficial for me to come out here, and try to save animals and people if possible.

A tornado this severe this late in December is almost unheard of it.

It cut a massive swath of destruction through Kentucky, traveling 165 miles across the state with wind speeds reaching 190 miles per hour.

And I'm not the only one that had to see the destruction for themselves.

Oh, it was pretty cool to see Joe Biden here.

It's a monumental massive event.

So I think that he showed up to show his support that he was behind helping out anyway he could.

I'm not here to snap a picture of the president though.

I'm here to rescue animals.

(guitar and harmonica music) (drone propellers buzzing) - Conditions are pretty cold and pretty windy.

What makes it easier for looking for animals is the ground's cold and their body temperature is warm, so they stick out.

Oh, there's an animal.

In the brush, right here.

Doesn't look like there's too many homes for him to be associated with.

But cats can wander quite a ways, so, Oh, we got another possible animal.

Yep.

There's one.

Almost looks like a mother animal with a kitten.

Yeah.

It's hard to tell whether these are feral cats, or someone's pet.

Most of 'em been in wooded areas, which lends me to believe they're in the, those are feral ones So we can put out food for 'em so at least they have food.

In these torn up towns, it's always tricky figuring out who needs to be rescued.

As I've learned from my time with Shannon and Asia, you can't just start grabbing animals.

You don't want to remove a feral cat from it's familiar territory.

Meow.

Here kitty kitty kitty kitty.

You don't want to take an animal whose owners are still home.

(drone propellers buzzing) And three dogs.

They're near an intact house though.

There's a generator there.

They're sticking around the house.

Well maybe they're not, they're going out onto the street.

Yeah, they're kind of foraging around now, and they're not staying by that house with the generator.

I think they're looking for food.

We can jet over there quick.

- [GPS Directions] Turn right west Water Street, then your destination will be on the right.

- [Doug] There's one.

Here puppies.

Oh, they're there.

(whistling) - Come here.

Come on.

As I'm trying to rescue the dogs, I'm noticing that they're skittish of the headlamp.

So I turned it off so that they would hopefully come closer.

Come, come on, come on.

Come, come, come.

It's okay.

It's okay, puppies.

Okay.

It's okay.

Come on, wanna come and get some food?

Come on.

Come here.

Come.

- These pups still have their collars on, so they're clearly someone's pets.

We need to get them out of the cold and somewhere safe.

A little more warmed up to 'em now, huh?

- I think they're brother and brother, or sister and sister, brother, and sister.

- [Cameraman] Yeah, they look just like each other.

I'm glad we got both of them.

- [Doug] Two drone flights in, and we got two lost dogs off the street.

We're off to a good start.

The local shelter isn't open this late, so for tonight, these guys are coming home with me.

- Puppies.

(upbeat music) Hey little pups, how'd you little puppies sleep, mm?

Hopefully, we'll find your owners in just a little bit.

Come, come pup pups.

Oh, good morning.

Let's go for a little walk.

Okay.

Come on, pups.

Let's go.

This one's rearing to go.

Whoa!

You are all tangled up now.

You just wanna play, huh?

You know, I'm hopeful the owners will be found cause they have both had collars on.

So it's not like they're abandoned dogs.

Come on.

Have two little pups here.

Look like brother and sister possibly.

- [Animal shelter worker] Yay.

- [Doug] They're pretty sweet.

They were ravenously hungry when we got 'em.

- [Animal shelter worker] Okay.

- [Doug] How do you go about finding the owners for 'em?

- [Animal shelter worker] We'll check for microchips.

If not, if they don't have any you know, we'll take pictures, and post them online.

- [Doug] Oh, okay.

Cool.

- Yeah.

- [Doug] All right.

Yeah, thank you.

- You're welcome.

- [Doug] Appreciate it.

- You know, the sad truth is, hopefully, the owners are alive.

My first focus on these trips is always the animals, but you can't ignore the human victims of these disasters.

In just two hours, this tornado took 77 lives, injured 500 more, and destroyed over 2000 buildings across the state.

Numbers that are hard even for the experts to comprehend.

So were you working the night of the tornado?

- [Pat] Yeah.

Yes, I actually was.

It was a, a very interesting night.

We do a lot of training, and, and I've seen a lot of storms like this, but I've never personally worked one like this.

When you're looking at the radar data, it was what a meteorologist would say was a classic signature.

In other words, you go into the textbooks, and you see something like this.

In the updraft part of the storm, the lightning bolts are actually a little bit shorter, And we can measure those, we can measure the distance, and look for these short lightning bolts.

And when there's a lot of 'em, that kind of shows, okay, you have a very intense updraft.

And if you have a very intense updraft, that means you have a very intense storm.

Just as the storm was moving into Mayfield, we were able to issue what we call a tornado emergency, which is something that they say you hopefully only do once in your life.

It's kind of our last opportunity to stand up and shout it's here.

It's hitting the town.

If you haven't taken cover, you need to do it right now.

You don't have any time left.

- [Doug] And so when people go to take cover, like I've heard and I don't really know, like people say to go in your bathtub, or - [Pat] As you get into the inner part of a house, normally the rooms are smaller.

And so you have all that structure around you.

So it's, it's sturdier generally in the center part of a building.

- Yeah.

- And a home.

And what's generally in the center part of the home, - Yeah.

- the bathroom.

- Yeah.

(drone propellers buzzing) - We say the bathroom's the safest spot in the house.

That's the only part intact.

See if you ever been sitting in that tub, you would've been possibly fine.

Crazy.

Well, rest of the house is gone.

Got something.

I noticed this cat, and it's moving along slow and gingerly, not jerky and fast and deliberate.

And I also noticed that it's a little heavier set.

So that starts to give me pretty good indications that this is likely someone's pet cat.

Kitty kitty kitty kitty.

Meow.

There's a cat carrier right here.

I'm pretty sure this cat probably lived here.

Didn't move around like a feral cat, And there's a cat scratching post right here.

And we saw it come walking along right through here.

It's a miracle the little kitty survived.

Well, with some effort we can catch this one.

All right.

Get some better bait tomorrow.

(easy music) So we're headed down Cherry Street to see if we found what looks to be someone's family cat.

Well, it looks like the owner may be there cause I see someone right next to the house.

At least it's good to see that the owner's alive.

I'm not sure how anyone would survive in that house.

Hey there.

- How ya doin?

- Good.

Hey, so is this your place here?

- Yes sir.

- Oh.

Hey.

Doug.

- Nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you.

- We flew a drone over the other day looking for animals, and saw a little cat, put a trap in - Saw one of them, I think she's in the cage this morning.

- Oh really?

So we got a cat?

- Yes sir.

- Oh good.

And that's your cat?

- Yes sir.

- [Animal shelter worker] It's okay, honey.

Love it.

Yes.

Come here, sweetie.

They found you for me.

- Oh, good girl.

- [Tina] We thought for sure she didn't make it.

- Yeah.

- We looked everywhere for her.

- [Animal shelter worker] Oh baby.

- Aww.

- [Tina] She goes outside, but she's not an outside cat.

She just goes outside, wanders around a little bit, and comes back in.

- [Doug] Oh, so she was in the house when the tornado hit then.

- I took my stepdaughter to a hotel because I knew it was gonna be bad.

- [Doug] Yeah.

- So, I couldn't take him with me.

I just prayed that they didn't get, I never thought anything would actually happen.

- Yeah.

- [Tina] And then came home, and whoa.

Well I can't thank you enough.

- Oh yeah, you're welcome.

It's super heartwarming when I get to see an animal reunited with its owner, and in this case, you know, Tina didn't know if her cat was alive for a week, and it survived 190 mile per hour tornado.

You wouldn't think anything would've survived.

And somehow, cat survived, As Shannon always says, never bet against a cat.

With all the attention Mayfield is getting from the news outlets and the president, it's easy to forget this tornado ripped across eight counties in Southwest Kentucky.

I'm headed to Dawson Springs today.

A much smaller town that got hit as hard by this storm, if not harder.

Over here, the animals have a whole new danger to contest with.

In this December cold, cats are going to be vetted down in these crushed houses.

It's a race against the clock to rescue them before the bulldozers finish their demolition.

But reinforcements are on the way.

- Hey there.

Nice to finally meet you.

- [Ryan] Yeah, absolutely.

- [Doug] Thanks for coming out.

- [Ryan] My name is Ryan Okrant, I founded my nonprofit ASSERT during the 2020 CZU fire in Boulder Creek, California, trapping cats, trapping different wild animals that needed assistance.

All different animal rescue needs during the disaster.

The tornadoes broke out, I believe it was late Friday night, a couple of weeks ago.

And I saw Doug put a post on Facebook, on his personal page saying, are there any crews responding?

And I was able to work it out to be able to hop on a plane, what, five days ago, flying to Nashville, and link up with Doug to be able to, to help rescue some of these animals.

- [Doug] So like that, right there, can be a cat.

- Wow.

And it just looked up.

That's only what, 40 yards away.

50 yards away.

- Yeah.

I can throw the spotlight on him.

That one looks pretty tame, huh?

- Yeah.

Clean paws, too.

- Yeah.

Here kitty kitty kitty.

- [Ryan] Yeah, there she is right there.

- [Doug] You see her?

- [Ryan] Yeah, right there.

Right in my beam.

- [Doug] Hi.

Hi sweetie.

Come here.

- [Ryan] Yeah.

She's a house cat for sure.

- [Doug] You think you can get her - [Ryan] Maybe.

Oh, she's a beauty.

- Come here, little girl.

It's okay.

Yeah.

A little bit of chicken and she's ours.

She's ready to go home.

I bet we give her 10 minutes and we got her.

- [Doug] Oh, there she is already.

- [Ryan] Come on, you know you're hungry.

- [Doug] Think she need it out of a hand, maybe.

- [Ryan] Come on.

Come here.

Come here.

(whispers) So close - [Doug] Got her?

- [Ryan] Yeah.

- [Doug] Need help?

- [Ryan] Yeah.

Oh yeah.

- Not quite.

No.

No.

Hold on, hold on.

- Fight the glove, fight the glove.

- Hold on.

- [Ryan] You got her?

AYE!

Straight down.

Yep, we're good.

Good girl, you're okay.

You're okay, little girl.

Shhh.

Great work.

- [Doug] Yeah man.

That was quick and easy, huh?

- [Ryan] Let's get her in the truck.

I didn't expect it to happen that quick.

- [Doug] No it doesn't, it's not normally that quick.

- [Ryan] That is unreal.

(drone propellers buzzing) - Oh look, one here.

And one there.

(slow rock music) Oh yeah, you wanna climb up and over?

- [Doug] Great work tonight.

- [Ryan] Yeah, it worked.

- [Doug] That's awesome.

Record, many cats, geez.

- [Ryan] Record for me too.

How many cats is that tonight?

- [Doug] That's six.

Six.

- We're at 11 in 24 hours.

- Oh yeah.

All the cats we rescued last night are going to stay at the local shelter until their owners are found, or they're adopted out to a new forever home.

Except for this guy.

- Are you a good boy?

Should we go see pops?

- [Doug] Yep.

He's gotta be excited.

Yeah I'd say that.

- Through our social media network, we were able to locate this cat's owner.

He's been staying at a lodge nearby after his house was destroyed in Dawson Springs.

- Jonathan.

- [Jonathan] Hey there.

- How are you?

- Yeah.

That's Casey - Him.

Aw - That's Casey.

- This is your morning.

Yeah.

- Were you in the apartment when the tornado hit or?

Oh wow.

- [Jonathan] I was in denial up to the last minute.

- Yeah.

- [Jonathan] Like, no, this can't happen to me.

It just, it ain't gonna happen to me.

- [Doug] Yeah.

- It can't happen to me.

- [Doug] Yeah.

- And you know, the power went out.

- [Doug] Yep.

- About 10, about five or 10 minutes the power being out, everything's black, you know?

- [Doug] Yeah.

It got real quiet.

- [Doug] Yeah.

- Then you hear this roar like a freight train.

They always say it on TV.

- [Doug] Yeah.

That's what I've heard.

- And it's for real, it sounds like a train rolling down the track.

I was in the middle of the bedroom, and I mean just boom.

The glass shattered like a shotgun blast.

The whole wall disappeared into blackness.

The whole roof disappeared into blackness.

It was like, it was just sent up into space.

I don't know if pieces of dry wall, pieces of the roof or something, I mean all this stuff kept piling up on my back.

- [Doug] Yeah.

- One layer at a time, kept getting heavier and heavier and heavier.

And I thought, well, I can't be, I'm not gonna be crushed under all this, I hope.

He was in the house with me when it hit.

And I didn't know for a while, I thought, well he could be buried under all that stuff.

- [Doug] Oh yeah.

- Or he may have made it out the window or - [Doug] Yeah.

- Out the wall.

Hey Casey, this is my biggest buddy.

- [Doug] Yep.

- He's always by my side.

- [Doug] He's a beauty.

- [Jonathan] You've taken great care of him.

He's such a good cat.

- This week has proven, once again, the resilience that animals have, their will to survive.

But here in Kentucky, they're not the only ones that have been through hell and back.

- [Resident] The whole house survivor.

And I've heard several of people from, from church that were in their bathtubs, with pots on their head as helmets, you know, they didn't know.

- [Doug] Yeah.

- [Resident] It's not, not a common thing.

- [Resident 2] It didn't even look like a tornado.

It looked like a giant black wall, it looked like a monster.

It sucked my cousin off the porch about 40 foot in air, slammed him down.

Started yelling tornado, flashing my light on that house.

And I could see over there, and I can hear 'em screaming, and I didn't know what to do.

I mean, when you hear people like that, you're gonna walk towards them.

You're gonna want to help them.

- [Resident 3] We've lost 75% of Dawson.

You know, you wanna just close your eyes, and hope when you open them, you know, it's back to normal, but it don't work that way.

I think when a town experiences something like this, I think people come together stronger.

- Hearing survivor's stories, seeing their perseverance through this disaster, it keeps me motivated to travel further, to push this drone technology into the future, and rescue some more animals along the way.